I've beaten this game many times, and everytime I've had my eye on importing the character into BG2 and going the whole way with him/her.

If you throw BG2 out of the equation, what's the best protagonist and party you can think of?

Assume TotSC installed...

Really, there is no better party than any other. Sure, you could make a party with Edwin, Dynaheir, Xan, Xar, and you all with specialist mage classes, and that would be a powerful party. Or you could create an all-thief and bard party. With Skie, Eldoth, Coran, Safana, Garrick, PC, etc.

Quite frankly, I like this party:

PC (Half-Elven Ranger)
Jaheria or Branwen
Coran
Skie
Garrick
Xan

With Xan, you mostly focus on incapacitation rather than damage dealing. And for any damage dealing spells you *must* have, Garrick can serve as a backup. The Coran-Sie duo helps, with you specializing both of them. Coran comes with Traps and Locks, so specialize Skie in Stealth and Pick Pocketing.

Jaheria/Branwen rae pretty good clerics, and can easily sub for an attacker if need be. Likewise wiht Coran. (though not the healing part)

That's my personal preference, but something you might want to do is download the "Every NPC at the beginning of the game" mod. It adds almost all of the NPC's to the beginning of the game, though most of them are at the Friendly Arm.

Good Hunting!

Skie and Garrick? Now, while it's hard to come up with the "best" party, I can say with some certainty that one of the best parties doesn't contain Garrick.

I can disagree. Quite frankly, I've found garrick quite interesting. Give him the light crossbow of speed, bolts of biting, nad the occasional potion of speed, and he can be quite a good character. Couple that with the ability to cast spells, and he can be Xans backup... And, Skie is mostly used for Stealthing and Pickpocketing. The Eagle Bow and Arrows of biting help out as well.

Really, I was trying new things. With the occasional banter, this party was quie fun.

<font color = lightgreen>There are enough good fighters in the game already--Khalid, Minsc, Kagain, Shar-Teel, and Ajantis--that your PC doesn't have to be one, unless you simply want one. Jaheira is a decent cleric, but Viconia and Branwen are better for that role. Imoen, Safana, and Alora are all decent theieves; with the prevalance of potions of Master Thievery and Perception, as well as a couple of pairs of Boots of Stealth and the Shadowed Armor, even a low-skill thief can become a great one. Edwin, Xan, and Xzar can all become very useful mages. Garrick and Eldoth for bards, but except for thier lore skill bards are really not very useful in BG1; you would do better to get a single-class mage, fighter/mage, or thief/mage.

The best protagonist idea would thus be a multi-class character: fighter/mage, thief/mage, or cleric/mage (the one I used in my most recent game). Take only a party of 4 or 5, unless you want to drag out the experience and fight all the encounters on every map available in the game. The golems in the pirate cave reload, so if you can survive them you have an endless supply of foes worth 2000 xp each; boring, but they will build up a party quickly.</font>

The question of what class the PC should be comes down to where are the NPCs deficient. But by and large there are excellent NPCs for every role:

Tank: Kagain can take damage better than anyone. He has great saves. And he regenerates. Give him the gauntlets of dexterity and you can't build a better tank.
Archer: Either Kivan or Coran is excellent. For fighter who deal out lots of damage both of these could be used. You can make a PC who is a bit better (19 dexterity, 4 stars in bow etc.) but really they are very good.
Cleric: Viconia is a spectacular choice - the magic reistance is worth a lot. As a fighter/cleric you can build a PC who is better than Yeslick, but really you don't need more than Viconia.
Mage: Again there is a spectacular choice in Edwin. His hit points suck, but the spell selection and number of spells can't be beat by a PC. The other mages are all substandard - Dynaheir because invokers miss out on all the best spells, Xan has Edwin's drawback and none of his advantages, Xzar suffers immensely from not having mirror image. Quayle is OK, but you could build a much better C/M PC. Imoen dualled is, of course, almost as good as Edwin, and basically as good as any PC you can build.
Thieves: Here the NPCs aren't as obvious. Coran is great as an archer, both Coran and Montaron are good (bit not great) back stabbers, Imoen and Safana are very good except for backstabbing.

To me the holes in the NPC group that the PC can readily fill are:
-Mage who can fight, use mirror image/blur to cause all sorts of havoc. Calls for a F/M or F->M. None of the NPCs is close to doing this. Eldoth and Garrick simply can't match a F/M.
-Spectacular backstabber. F/T or F->T. Coran and Montaron both fall a little short here.
-Cleric who can best use cleric buffs. F/C or F->C.

Because of the way the game progresses I think the dual classes are quite a bit stronger - you don't need much spell power until later, and later on you need your casters to be able to take same damage.

I think my powergaming party would be:
-Kagain, tank and decoy.
-Coran archer, scout, lock picker
-Imoen traps, pick pockets, and back line mage (dual at lvl 5 or 6, once traps are at 100% and pickpockets are close enough to get the rest with potions)
-Viconia cleric extraordinaire
-PC fighter dualled to mage at level 7

The trick here will be managing both dual classes. However it's easy to add another thief until you get Imoen's traps back.

If you're taking a character into BGII it's unlikely you'd want to dual at BG levels. But for BG alone these are the most powerful characters at the end of the game.

BG1 only:
Me: Fighter (Generic Archer)
Imoen Dualed at Lvl. 7
Kivan
Kagain
Branwen --> Yeslick
Coran

A good way to determine the sort of class that is the "most powerful" for any game is to look at the class of the final boss of that game.

Entire Series (Multiplayer):
Elven F/M
Halfling F/T
Half-Elf R/C
Gnomish F/I
Elven F/T/M
Half-Elf F/C/M

Last night I had to scrap my No-Reloads game of the Multiplayer party above--my F/T got trapped in a corner of the Cloakwood Mines and died, and since we were more than 24 hours away from the nearest Temple....ouch. My own damn fault, though.

Quite frankly, Ithink Skie can prove to be a nice thief. Despite you getting her so late in the game. But take note, NPC's such as Tiax, or Alora, ones you may want early, can be found with the NPC mod I mentioned earlier. Do yourself a favor and get it!